Amazon Stores: What You Need to Know

January 16, 2020

Brands selling on Amazon may sometimes feel limited by a product page interface that can preclude them from portraying their brand’s style in a way that is consistent with their aesthetic. It can also be difficult for brands to promote their broader catalog of products on a product page where Amazon is always featuring merchandise from competing sellers.

Fortunately, there is a way to create a branded space within Amazon; a place where customers can focus specifically on what your brand has to offer and what your brand is all about. If you’ve never heard of Amazon Storefronts or know very little about them, I’m here to help so you can begin to enjoy this FREE* tool for boosting your brand and your products.

*That’s right, it’s free, but only vendors and brand registered sellers are eligible to use Stores.

So What is an Amazon Store?

Imagine your Amazon Store as your brand’s own devoted space within the wider Amazon marketplace. Now when a customer wants to explore your offerings in particular, they’ll have access to branded, multi-page content (up to 3 levels) designed and maintained by you. Use this space to tell your brand’s story, cross-sell lower-traffic items, and promote higher-priced products. Use of Amazon Stores in conjunction with Sponsored Brands Ads has been shown to increase conversion rates by 22%, and can lower ACoS by 20-40%.

With Stores, you can create a sense of continuity between the style of your brand’s website and your presence on Amazon. You’ll get your very own readable URL (www.amazon.com/yourbrand) that will be easy to link to from your website and your off-Amazon advertising. It’s estimated that 35-50% of Storefront traffic comes from sources off Amazon that are using this readable URL. What’s more, this traffic driven to Stores from outside Amazon converts to 35-45% of Storefront sales.

What are Best Practices in a Good Store Design?

Amazon has streamlined the Store building process for you, so you don’t need to write a single line of code when designing your Store page. And don’t worry; all the templates have responsive designs baked-in, so they’ll work on any device. There are 3 customizable templates to choose from:

Product Grid (Display a large number of related products in your catalog.)

Highlight (Showcase a flagship product.)

Marquee (Tell your brand story and display different categories.)

Within each template, you’ll use drag-and-drop tiles to create your Store. The interactive tiles may include images, titles, product grids, galleries, video, or navigation. After you’ve built and submitted your store for review, it will be reviewed by Amazon within 72 hours.

Now, about best practices in designing your store:

While Stores are a great way to promote your brand, don’t lose the feel of Amazon when designing your Store. You are still, after all, selling to Amazon shoppers who are accustomed to Amazon’s interface. You’ll want to use the same recognizable Amazon Prime symbols, pricing, and the yellow “Add to cart” button.

Within the tiles of your Store, be sure to use prominent calls to action. These include language like Buy Now, Shop Now, or Add to Cart. Offer customers directions on what to do or where to go next; the goal is not to let the customer get lost while browsing your page. They should know exactly where to click without having to guess.

On your home page, feature your best selling products. These are the workhorses of your product catalog that your customer is likely looking for, so you’ll want to make sure they are up-front and easy to find.

Featuring your high performing products prominently (as opposed to emphasizing your entire catalog) leads us to the next point: keep your Store simple. A famous study at Columbia University confirms the notion that too many options can overwhelm shoppers, leading to debilitating indecision. Carefully curating what you choose to highlight on your Store home page will lead to better conversion rates. You can group your other products into smaller categories on sub-pages so the customer can easily navigate to what they want, or explore your other offerings on a different page.

That in mind, it should be noted that only ~10% of customers will visit additional pages within your Store. Cross-sell opportunities should be on the home page or on carefully curated sub-pages, particularly if you’ve used Sponsored Brand Ads to promote those products.

Lastly, design with advertising in mind. For instance, if you used Sponsored Brand Ads to drive traffic to your Store, what are you trying to sell? Are those items adequately featured on your Storefront so that customers will be able to easily find them? Have you made your value proposition clear?

How Do I Maximize My Use of Stores?

Stores include an Insights Dashboard that will give you metrics regarding page views, daily visitors, and sales related to your Store. You can also analyze the traffic earned from using your Store URL in external marketing as well. With the sales and traffic data you’ll get from Stores, you’ll know what’s working and what is not, so you can better optimize your Sponsored Brand ads and Store design.

Sponsored Brand Ads are an effective way to drive shoppers to your Amazon Store. Sponsored Brand Ads are different from Sponsored Product Ads in that they are more brand-centric and occupy positions outside of the product listing space. Within your Sponsored Brand Ads you can use your brand’s logo, or a product image, along with custom text and three other product images. When clicked upon, these ads can take customers to your Store home page or subpage, and they should use keywords specific to your product.

In Conclusion

If you’re a brand registered seller or vendor, we’d highly recommend you invest some time into designing an Amazon Store. The ready-made templates make it easy to do, and the analytical tools built into Stores will help you track and optimize how your advertising is driving traffic to your brand’s Store. Familiarizing customers with your brand and promoting your products in a brand-centric space is now easier to accomplish with Amazon Stores.

Hillary has a B.S. in English / Rhetoric & Composition and is a copywriter and content creator for Egility. She specializes in turning ordinary language into compelling copy for Amazon product pages and turning effective communication into sales.